I use iTunes to manage my music collection which is stored on a Debian Linux file server and accessed via Samba. My entire collection is MP3 files because (a) I don’t like encumbered music and (b) Apple’s DRM files don’t play on my Squeezebox.

When I buy stuff from iTunes, I have to burn the songs to a blank CD and then re-import them to iTunes as MP3 files. I used to use JHymn to do this automatically without having to waste a blank CD, but Apple did something with iTunes, so this solution doesn’t work anymore.

What do I do with the CD after I’ve imported it? I give it to someone, usually a friend if they’re over for dinner or something.

Tell me who this DRM stuff is helping, eh? Because right now it seems like it’s causing me to waste time burning these stupid CDs and guaranteeing that one of my friends get a copy of my latest music.

Microsoft has just unveiled a new commitment not to assert certain rights against people who develop code based on specifications that Microsoft has developed. It’s called the Open Specification Promise.

Interesting to observe that Microsoft did not include their RSS extensions (called SSE) in this list of specifications covered by their promise, a problem that I highlighted almost a year ago.

There is a difference between (a) putting a certain type of liberal copyright on a specification of a protocol or file format and (b) allowing unencumbered implementations of such specification. Microsoft has acknowledged as much with their new Open Specification Promise.

An analogy might be if I publish a recipe for baking a cake under a Creative Commons license, you might still not be able to actually bake the cake because I have some kind of an patent, pending or otherwise, on implementations of the cake.